She will cling to that thing
Called happiness, grasp it,
Take it, no matter what.
Seasons chilling and killing,
Bombs falling and exploding,
She will run through mud,
The sky on fire,
Her children sheltered
Under her embroidered cloak,
Through smoke and bullets
And choked roads,
Where brave men die.
She will run,
Her heart in her chest
Because surviving means
Being better than the rest.
While buses queue at borders,
She lays down in a hut
Patrolled by the enemy,
Fearing the prod of a rifle,
The strangled screams of others
Whose luck has run out.
She will cling to that thing
Called freedom, grasp it,
Take it, no matter what.
Her husband sends txt messages
From the front: “We kill Russians!”
And she is glad in her exile,
While the children play at war:
Plastic guns, plastic bullets.
Her nausea a symptom
Of something deeper:
Maybe pregnancy, maybe the sense
the world could end at any minute.
No such luck, is her surmise,
As we keep rolling around the sun,
Fucking, fighting
And killing each other.
Still her refugee grasp
Reaches to clasp
That fleeting moment,
That feeling so rare these days,
A singular and unabashed
Sense of self.
©Shaun Green 2023
